And the Guardian Says

Last updated : 06 January 2005 By Covsupport
That Peter Reid has certainly made a monkey out of Coventry, hasn't he? Only last May he was being unveiled as the club's new manager on a contract nearly as fat as chairman Mike McGinnity. Yet just eight months later, he's thrown in the towel after winning just 10 of his 31 games in charge. "Peter said to me 'chairman, I think the best thing for us to do is to go our separate ways, I've taken the club as far as I can'," explained McGinnity. Which isn't quite true, surely - for at the rate the Sky Blues, currently 20th in the Championship, were falling, League One was well within reach too.

Still, anyone who gets sacked with a £1m pay-off at Leeds and then quickly finds himself another job/sucker can't be quite as hapless as he seems (although Coventry fans, incensed at how Reid often played his strikers as wingers, would disagree). And McGinnity was certainly happy to make excuses on Reid's behalf. "We haven't had any luck," he insisted, pulling as straight a face as his fleshy jowls would allow. "We lost at Gillingham, we drew against Derby when we were 2-0 up - you can go on and on," he continued, doing just that. "Don't put all the blame on Peter Reid, the players are responsible too."

As well as the chairman, McGinnity didn't add. For last May, he cruelly tossed aside the popular Eric Black, who nearly took Coventry to the play-offs with a brand of swashbuckling football last seen at Highfield Road when Sinita topped the charts, only to be sacked for being "too inconsistent". For now, no permanent successor has yet been identified, although Adrian Heath - whose managerial record is even worse than Reid's - will take charge for the FA Cup game against Crewe. In the meantime, McGinnity must wish he'd taken the advice of Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57: always bet on Black.